White Box and Black Box @ Danga City Mall

During 11th Annual JB Arts Festival I stopped by the White Box which is on the top floor of Danga City Mall in downtown Johor Bahru. A few weeks later I listened to a talk on backpacking around South America and Europe at the Black Box.

JB sketchers display with some of the participants work. Join in their monthly outings and more activities.

These have become permanent spaces (for the time being anyway). Since the mall has many unrented spots this is a very wise idea; making use of otherwise wasted space and also brining in potential customers for businesses at the mall.

The Black Box is used for talks and performances (music etc.). It can probably hold about 70-100 people. And it is also rented out for people trying to convince people to buy different thing and the like (I would imagine rented out by the Mall to make some money, which is a decent idea).

The White Box is a permanent gallery with space for classes (painting etc.). For an artist looking to see if there is a market for their work it seems like a great idea. Most galleries have a to charge a fairly high markup and limit artists quite a bit in order to survive as a business.

Painting of woman's face

The White Box is an ongoing project of the JB Arts Festival to promote art all year long. So I think they offer artists a great opportunity. Especially when they are starting out, they artist can sell items for much less than a gallery would allow (because of the economics involved). So the artist can build a following if they have nice art.

And looking around there was quite a bit of nice art, I think. It will be a great addition to JB if this gallery can continue and they can offer classes etc..

They had a drawing by See Poh Chen which I could tell was the artist working on the large mural on Jalan Tan Hiok Nee (I also talked to the people working on the gallery and they confirmed this).